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Offering Free College to Some of the World’s Poorest Students

The University of the People has a tiny budget but huge goals.

Computer users are pictured in an internet cafe in Istanbul on September 3, 2009 where governmental censorship has banned websites including the video sharing site YouTube. Prohibited since 2007 YouTube remains in the top five most visited internet sites in Turkey. AFP PHOTO / UGUR CAN (Photo credit should read UGUR CAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Lots of uni­versity pres­id­ents talk about serving low-in­come stu­dents as one part of their edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion. Is­raeli en­tre­pren­eur Shai Reshef foun­ded a col­lege spe­cific­ally to serve the world’s poorest cit­izens. Uni­versity of the People is a tu­ition-free, on­line non­profit staffed mostly by vo­lun­teers. The in­sti­tu­tion’s few costs are covered by phil­an­throp­ic dona­tions and the small fees stu­dents pay to ap­ply for ad­mis­sion and to take ex­ams. So far, the Cali­for­nia-based col­lege of­fers just four de­grees: two- and four-year un­der­gradu­ate de­grees in com­puter sci­ence and busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion. Since it opened in 2009, Uni­versity of the People has ac­cep­ted 1,700 stu­dents from 143 coun­tries.

A few weeks ago, Uni­versity of the People was ac­cred­ited by a na­tion­al ac­cred­it­or, the Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing Coun­cil. Sev­er­al stu­dents have com­pleted as­so­ci­ate’s de­grees and are on their way to earn a bach­el­or’s; on April 2, sev­en stu­dents will be­come the school’s first gradu­ates.

Na­tion­al Journ­al spoke re­cently with Reshef to learn how Uni­versity of the People man­ages to provide a nearly free edu­ca­tion to any­one with a high school dip­loma, Eng­lish pro­fi­ciency, and an In­ter­net con­nec­tion. Ed­ited ex­cerpts fol­low.

How is Uni­versity of the People dif­fer­ent from a massive open on­line course, such as those offered by Cours­era and Uda­city?

We are a full uni­versity. You need to fol­low the cur­riculum; you need to have a min­im­um grade-point av­er­age. It’s a full de­gree pro­gram, and you have some elect­ives, but it’s not that you can choose any course. You need to fol­low our cur­riculum. So this is the first dif­fer­ence.

The second dif­fer­ence, which I think might be even more im­port­ant, is the kind of stu­dents we have. Eighty per­cent of stu­dents who en­roll in MOOCs have either a bach­el­or, mas­ter, or Ph.D. This is not our pop­u­la­tion. Our stu­dents are sur­viv­ors of the gen­o­cide in Rwanda, earth­quake in Haiti, tsunami in In­done­sia. We are the op­por­tun­ity for those who have no oth­er op­por­tun­ity.

And as such comes a third dif­fer­ence. In Cours­era — in the MOOCs in gen­er­al — they have about 5 per­cent com­ple­tion of each course. In our case, people come from much weak­er aca­dem­ic back­grounds. However, we put them in small classes of 20 to 30 — not thou­sands — and in each classroom we have an in­struct­or. We ac­tu­ally fol­low them, give them the per­son­al­ized at­ten­tion they need. The res­ults are that re­cently 75 per­cent of those who star­ted moved with us to the second year. I’m not talk­ing 5 per­cent after one course — I’m talk­ing 75 per­cent after 10 courses. So it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of of­fer­ing, dif­fer­ent kind of pop­u­la­tion, and dif­fer­ent kind of res­ults.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I think what they’re do­ing is ex­tremely im­port­ant, and I’m very happy that they do it. They should con­tin­ue do­ing it. But it’s dif­fer­ent.

You’re also at­tract­ing a grow­ing num­ber of U.S. stu­dents. Can you tell me more about them?

About 25 per­cent of our stu­dents are from the U.S., al­though many of them were not born in the U.S. They might be im­mig­rants, they might be refugees, they might be maybe un­doc­u­mented — we don’t know. We just do know that many of them are not born in the U.S.

How do Uni­versity of the People’s on­line classrooms work?

In or­der to be ac­cep­ted, stu­dents need to have a high school dip­loma, which we should be able to veri­fy is from a re­cog­nized school. Second, they must have pro­fi­cient Eng­lish. And, ob­vi­ously, they need an In­ter­net con­nec­tion. Then they’ll be ac­cep­ted, and they need to fol­low the cur­riculum. A course is nine weeks long. We have five terms a year, and they ex­pect to study two courses a term in or­der to gradu­ate in four years. Every course is di­vided in­to weeks.

It is very im­port­ant for us to try to have a mix of stu­dents in each vir­tu­al classroom from around the world. The dis­cus­sion ques­tion is the core of our stud­ies. After stu­dents come to the classroom, they read the lec­ture notes and go in­to the read­ing as­sign­ment; they start dis­cuss­ing the top­ic of the week. So let’s say that our first stu­dent — just to give an ex­ample — is Chinese, be­cause the morn­ing starts first in China. Thursday morn­ing, he goes in­to the classroom and does everything he needs, and he de­cides to post his own con­tri­bu­tion to the class dis­cus­sion. The second stu­dent — let’s say she’s In­done­sian. And she does the same, and she sees what the Chinese stu­dent writes, and she de­cides to com­ment on it. Let’s say that the third one is from New York, and he does the same, and com­ments, and the Chinese stu­dent is very likely to go back to the vir­tu­al classroom and see what oth­er people say about his point.

So all week long, the dis­cus­sion de­vel­ops between the stu­dents, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of an in­struct­or. By the end of the week, they take a quiz to veri­fy that they mastered the ma­ter­i­al. They hand in their home­work, which is as­sessed ran­domly by their peers, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the in­struct­or, who has the right to over­ride the grade. And they get the grade for the week, and move to the next week. By the end of the course, after nine weeks, they take the fi­nal ex­am, which is proctored, and they get the grade and move to the next course.

We don’t use au­dio. We don’t use video. You don’t need broad­band in or­der to study with us. Everything is text-based, to en­sure that any stu­dent from any coun­try with any In­ter­net con­nec­tion can study with us. We’re just start­ing to in­tro­duce video slowly, but it’s elect­ive; it’s nev­er man­dat­ory.

When you say ex­ams are proctored — are they proctored us­ing an on­line ser­vice, or is there an on-the-ground com­pon­ent to that?

On the ground, in 143 coun­tries. In some places, we have fa­cil­it­ies. But in most cases, we send the ex­ams to one of our proc­tors. Stu­dents have to come to the proc­tor, identi­fy them­selves, and take the ex­ams in front of the proc­tors.

So for that piece, stu­dents might have to travel to take the ex­am? They can’t just do that from their com­puter?

Well, yes, even though we try to find proc­tors nearby where they live.

Are there any oth­er de­grees or fields of study that you’re think­ing about in­tro­du­cing?

Yes. Right now, we have only busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion and com­puter sci­ence. We de­cided to start with these [be­cause] they are most in-de­mand world­wide and are there­fore most likely to help our stu­dents find a job. But oth­er pro­fes­sions are in great de­mand in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries — and even the U.S. — as well, like health ser­vices. So we are now in the pro­cess of think­ing about ad­di­tion­al pro­grams to of­fer.

Uni­versity of the People re­cently got its first ac­cred­it­a­tion re­cog­ni­tion. What was that pro­cess like?

We worked on it over three years. It was on our mind from the day we built the uni­versity. It was clear to us all along, and def­in­itely now, that it made us a bet­ter-qual­ity uni­versity. We are very happy that we did it. Not only that — stu­dents re­quire it. You know, we have over 1.2 mil­lion fans on Face­book. We’re ac­tu­ally the second-largest uni­versity on Face­book after Har­vard. And be­fore we were ac­cred­ited, for five years, every single day there was a dis­cus­sion about our ac­cred­it­a­tion. Will you be ac­cred­ited? Are you try­ing to be ac­cred­ited? With whom? Why? How will you do it? When?

For leg­al reas­ons, we were not al­lowed to be part of these dis­cus­sions, which really up­set us. But you real­ize how im­port­ant this is for stu­dents, be­cause in many cases, es­pe­cially in for­eign coun­tries, stu­dents are afraid that you’re a dip­loma mill if you are not ac­cred­ited. It’s im­port­ant for them to get a job; it is im­port­ant if they want to ap­ply for mas­ter-level pro­grams.

Are you try­ing to get re­gion­al or pro­gram-spe­cif­ic ac­cred­it­a­tion?

It’s a good ques­tion. Right now we’re very happy with our ac­cred­it­a­tion. It’s re­cog­nized by the De­part­ment of Edu­ca­tion. And our second goal is to be­come fin­an­cially sus­tain­able. In or­der to be there, we need to have 5,000 stu­dents — which we ex­pect to have in 2016 — and we need to raise $5 mil­lion. That’s our next main goal.

What is the busi­ness mod­el needed to run an in­sti­tu­tion like this?

First of all, the uni­versity is based on vo­lun­teers. We have over 3,000 vo­lun­teer­ing pro­fess­ors who came on board to help us. Our pres­id­ent coun­cil is chaired by John Sex­ton from NYU and in­cludes Colin Lu­cas, the [former] vice chan­cel­lor of Ox­ford; Ju­dith Sha­piro from Barn­ard; Nick Dirks from Berke­ley. Our prov­ost is from Columbia; our deans are from NYU; and our top aca­dem­ic lead­er­ship are from Yale, NYU, Michigan, Stan­ford, Ox­ford, etc.

We build a struc­ture where most of the jobs are be­ing done by vo­lun­teers. But there’s backup in the form of com­pensated per­son­nel. So if our prov­ost is a vo­lun­teer, our vice prov­ost is be­ing com­pensated. We have about 14 people on our payroll; all the rest are vo­lun­teers. It’s not only our aca­dem­ics: Our CFO is vo­lun­teer; our vice pres­id­ent for strategy and plan­ning is vo­lun­teer.

We ask our stu­dents to cov­er the cost of their ex­ams, $100 per ex­am. If they have the money, great. If they don’t have the money, we work very hard that nobody will be left be­hind for fin­an­cial reas­ons. So we’re try­ing to make sure that we have enough schol­ar­ships. We have one amaz­ing pro­gram with Mi­crosoft that funds 1,000 stu­dents in Africa.

Even­tu­ally, that will make us sus­tain­able. Right now, however, we need about $5 mil­lion to get to that point. Last year, we ran on a budget of about $1 mil­lion a year. We are very for­tu­nate to be sup­por­ted by the Gates Found­a­tion, Hew­lett Found­a­tion, Carne­gie Cor­por­a­tion, Kaufmann Found­a­tion, and oth­ers. But in the long run, we are go­ing to be sus­tain­able.

Through those small fees that stu­dents have to pay?

Yes, ex­actly. It’s be­cause of three ele­ments. One, as I men­tioned, is the vo­lun­teers. Second, we use open-source tech­no­logy, so we don’t need to pay for the tech­no­logy, and open edu­ca­tion­al re­sources, so we don’t need to pay for IP [in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty]. All of our ma­ter­i­al comes free.

We’re build­ing a mod­el be­cause we want to show that there is an­oth­er way to de­liv­er high­er edu­ca­tion. It shouldn’t cost as much as it costs. Even more im­port­ant, we’re build­ing a mod­el for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries’ gov­ern­ments. Be­cause when you think about it, right now they take the few mil­lions that they have, and they try to build, what, Har­vard, Stan­ford, Ox­ford. A few years go by, and it’s not Ox­ford, not Har­vard, be­cause you don’t build these in­sti­tu­tions in a few years or with a few mil­lion. But by then, the money’s gone.

We’re say­ing: use our mod­el. You can edu­cate every single per­son in your coun­try at a min­im­um cost. It’s not go­ing to be Har­vard, but we can show you how to have a qual­ity edu­ca­tion for every­one. It would be a great leap for any coun­try if all the pop­u­la­tion had a qual­ity aca­dem­ic edu­ca­tion.

We talk a lot here in the U.S. about the chal­lenges of man­aging di­verse stu­dent bod­ies. Is that something that you think about — how to make classes rel­ev­ant to stu­dents from all over the world, how to en­sure that cur­riculum ap­plies to jobs in their com­munit­ies?

You know, UN­ESCO stated that in 2025, 100 mil­lion stu­dents will be de­prived from high­er edu­ca­tion just be­cause there wer­en’t enough seats for them. So we’re talk­ing about a huge pop­u­la­tion. One hun­dred mil­lion stu­dents — that’s people who gradu­ate high school, people who are qual­i­fied and want it. We are try­ing to build a way for them to study.

Every time stu­dents take a nine-week class, they meet 20 to 30 stu­dents from 20 to 30 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. We be­lieve that we de­vel­op a pos­it­ive shift in at­ti­tude, which is a great as­set of our pro­gram bey­ond edu­ca­tion. Just pic­ture what hap­pens when an In­di­an, each time he takes the class meets a dif­fer­ent Pakistani, and a Palestini­an, each time he takes a class meets a dif­fer­ent Is­raeli. We open their mind to new cul­tures, es­pe­cially to those who they con­sider to be their en­emies, and show them that that ac­tu­ally they are not their en­emies, but are usu­ally the closest to them in terms of cul­ture. Be­cause an In­di­an and a Pakistani, in terms of cul­ture, are much closer than to Chinese or to Amer­ic­ans, right? I keep say­ing that they come to us in or­der to find a job, but we have an­oth­er mis­sion, which is to make peace in the world a bit closer. At the same time, we ask them not to in­volve polit­ics in the class.

It’s one of the main reas­ons we have so many vo­lun­teer pro­fess­ors. I mean, you can’t find this kind of di­versity. And the stor­ies we hear from our stu­dents are amaz­ing stor­ies — the hard­ships they’ve sur­vived and the amaz­ing lives they’ve gone through.

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